Celebrating America's Female Warriors

couples

My apologies for being one of the worst blog authors you’ve probably put up with in a while. Over the course of the last few weeks, I dug deep into my applied project write-up and mulled over what to include/exclude from my applied project itself, which will be a 20-25 minute iMovie. Upon completion of my project presentation, my goal is to return to video to this site for public consumption. It is–and is intended to be–an alternative American war narrative, so be prepared for the fact it neither feeds into the normally messaging seen in American war genre films nor is it fully on the other spectrum home to anti-war sentiments.

Earlier this year though I promised you I would also do a 2006 versus 2016, especially as it relates to giving you what I essentially feel is the other half of my military service. Life at 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing (MAW) and my second Iraq deployment with Marine Aircraft Group (MAG) 16 represented a significant culture shift from ground side Marine Corps life. Therefore, today, I am upholding my promise to you. Today I will start my 2006 to 2016 comparisons; while not complete, these entries that follow intermittently for the rest of the year will allow you to see the different voice I took with my writing and also contribute to a better understanding of how that time further honed my desire to leave the Corps and assimilate back into civilian life.

p.s. I have to chuckle at my old self, too. I totally love (some types of) white wine now and I’m a big Tennessee whiskey and Kentucky bourbon fan. I will probably equal disappoint a lot of people when I mention that the only sweet red wine I like I found at Trader Joe’s.

I do see some bitterness placed (unduly) on my senior prom date and this is why situating an event in context matters, which I failed to do in the journal entry below. He was sick when he took me to prom and unfortunately, as one of the not-so-cool kids, I was in the unfortunate position of nearly every popular girl in my class coming over to talk to my date, who was older than all of us. He, being the nice person that he was and likely still is, apologized for the state of our evening but obviously the person I was back in 2006 was still a bit hurt my senior prom did not live up to expectations.

Me, on the left, deciding to show off my athletic physique for senior prom.

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I want to believe our society is coming close to equally treating female veterans as it does male veterans. I really do. However, I constantly find reminders that support the taken-for-granted notion veterans (and service members) are men.

I am even more embarrassed at some of the products coming out, particularly the ones that encourage the “girl” who stays behind supporting her man. These things seem to sell a notion military wives and girlfriends do not have an identity all their own. Would you see something of this label for same sex couples?! No, but it’s perfectly normal for heteronormative marketing.

I don’t wish to alienate other women, but I see over and over again how society values the “military wife” and her fulfillment of a traditional gender role. She is placed on a pedestal for raising the kid(s), keeping the house, and staying loyal as her man serves his country. Yet, female service members (and veterans) are forgotten persons. We are remembered for mothering (as applicable), but our military service…it’s an invisible achievement.

I saw this issue play out again in my life when my husband and I picked up our car from a valet. The man, probably slightly younger than us, noticed our veteran plate. He turned to my husband and asked his service branch. Thomas responded with ‘Marine Corps’ and the valet thanked him for his service.

In these moments, I better understand female veterans who place woman veteran license plates on their car, especially those whose husbands (or boyfriends) did not serve in the military. I do not have one myself and the recent woman veteran hat is coming up increasingly in social media sites.

I am getting closer to upping the ante for my veteran recognition project. I’ve worn my dog tags since last October with little notice. I haven’t blatantly hung out the tags; as a veteran, I feel it would be tacky to do so. I was hoping people would notice a dog tag chain is unlike other pieces of ‘jewelry’ and therefore make the connection. Haha….no one notices. Truly, no one notices.

I think a female veteran hat would be a silly addition to my project but I promise a creative approach to this problem. Society does not need to thank its female veterans (as equally as it does not need to thank male veterans) however it does need to recognize on many levels women serve in our Armed Forces.

~Cheryl

Wearing my dog tags as part of my social experiment. (May 31st at Montelucia–Scottsdale, AZ)

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Recently, my husband and I volunteered to be participants in a study on couples and how they cope with stress. Normally, I would suspect it would be difficult to encourage him to participate but there was a $70 cash incentive, which easily paid for some extra dining out this month. We are such bad foodies…any opportunity to go out to eat makes us happy. We love our food adventures.

What I wanted to mention though and I hadn’t thought of it at the time of the study, is our military experiences are not a source of stress in our relationship. We both are there for each other through our health-related issues like our chest pains and other such issues. We can talk about dealing with indirect fire on our deployments, our thoughts on poor leadership and the consequence it has on military service members (such as the Camp Bastion attack in 2012), and some of the sexual harassment I dealt with during my service.

We are different in a way because for many military couples, there’s the dynamic of the service member, typically a man, and the spouse or partner, typically a civilian woman. Oftentimes, the civilian spouse/partner has little to no idea what kinds of things the service member encounters. There are issues of operational security so only certain things can be shared and unfortunately, as well, there are times service members relay information they shouldn’t have. There’s a reason why there’s a saying “Loose lips sink ships.”

When the civilian partner is also really young in the relationship (18-20 year old group) and the service member leaves for a combat deployment, there is a lot of discourse. It doesn’t help as well that when you look biologically at people of this age, there is a lot of emotional development still occurring. There tends to be a lot of emotional chaos at the same time that surrounds deployments. In some ways, I’ve experienced my own share. I had a partner who decided to end a relationship prior to my departure to Iraq and it changed our ability to remain friends afterwards. I was curt in my email responses that he could not talk to me the same way he did while we were dating. In the duration of that deployment though, he did send me one letter that revealed a side of him I did not experience throughout our courtship. I had really wanted to know that I was loved and appreciated in our former relationship and he recognized that he lost something when I decided to date again.

It’s even things like I just explained that I continue to learn are safe subjects to have with my husband. He made the decision to marry me and I equally made the same decision. I cannot remember the full conversation in detail but we talked freely about marriage not as the entering into of a religious obligation for a longterm partnership, as others see and are taught the institution of marriage to be.

He is Agnostic and I consider myself a Christian although I do not follow an adherence to certain principles and have made my own share of mistakes according to the teachings of the church. I don’t admonish people for having premarital sex. I think it’s more important to teach sexual education as a means of overall health and safety. It bothers me greatly that society still tends to teach a woman’s worth as attached to her sexuality. There are mixed messages about being a virgin and being prudish. There is the social positioning that women should be sexually attractive and yet at the same time, she is equally at risk of begin termed a whore, slut, or some other debasing slang term. I don’t believe in abortion although I will not interfere with another’s right to one. For example, a woman who is raped is someone I truly feel deserves the right to choose abortion if she feels she cannot deal with the unplanned pregnancy for mental health reasons. I also believe abortion is acceptable if a woman’s health is at risk and she is interested in her own self-preservation. She should not be denied the right to live in order to save her unborn child. However, I also don’t believe people should get abortions because they neglected to use birth control appropriately. I am friends with people who have gone through this situation and I think it’s important that we equally understand where each other is regarding this issue.

Anyways, I’ve gone incredibly off topic but I felt it was important to share where my views are a mixture of beliefs (part upbringing, part education, partly influenced by religion). Getting back to what are forms of stress and happiness for us though…

One of the photos I carried with me on my 2004-2005 Iraq deployment.

Family issues are #1 a source of stress for me. I think anyone would agree it’s difficult at times when you have different beliefs compared to your parents, siblings, aunts & uncles, or grandparents. Everyone was raised in different circumstances according to society’s beliefs at the time of upbringing; influence of friends, families, and other significant persons; specific limitations/abilities of each person; and so on. We are unique as individuals and our personality types do not always mesh well together. Trying to keep everyone happy is a big job and I do realize it’s not my responsibility anymore. When I was younger, I tried really hard to be a kid who got good grades, stayed out of trouble, and overall, worked to meet the expectations of others.

In late June/July of 2005, after coming back from my first deployment, I realized it was a burden I no longer wanted or could carry. I wasn’t just exhausted from pleasing everyone, but felt downright destroyed. My relationship with my dad had fallen apart after trusting him to manage one of my student loans, which went to collections. My relationship with my extended family felt strained because I was eager to serve my country and they were more concerned that I didn’t volunteer again for another deployment. There were many other issues I encountered, but the most important thing I learned that year was knowing I was hurting myself by putting everyone else first. I stepped back from a lot of people. It was a scary thing to do but I knew that I wanted to finally live for myself and find my own path, even if it took years to get there.

In doing this stress survey, the issue “discovered” to be a shared point of stress was our financial attitudes. It is no shock to me that it’s an issue that bothers us both greatly. I’m more apt to feel like my money will be gone again if I don’t hoard some of it. That happens when you’ve been unemployed twice. I could care less if I am ever independently wealthy; what I don’t ever want to be again is poor.

The survey ends on a good note as we discussed our daughter, our shared joy. She is soooo eager to one day be a big sister and it’s funny to see this behavior modeled in a small child. While she enjoys our company, all she wants (for the most part) is a sibling. We’ve tentatively talked to her about how families come in all shapes and sizes (one parent, two moms or two dads). I think if we begin to think more seriously about adopting later, she would be thrilled. We joked that she’d get to pick her sibling and my husband reminded me she really wants a sister. However, should we choose adoption, Avery’s opinion on the matter is of upmost importance to us. She is our only child and is old enough to be part of the conversation about the potential expansion of our family, should be have the urge to parent another child. Neither he or I feels a biological child is a superior option to becoming parents; it’s not a sentiment shared among many people we know, but for us, an adopted child would be 100% ours, the way Avery was the moment we found out I was pregnant.